Extending battery life of portable devices

How to squeeze more life out of DC batteries has become a focused engineering effort in the portable products area. This problem requires not only an understanding of load management, component selection, but also overall systems architecture. Battery life goals also depends on the correct selection of NiCd, NiMH, alkaline or other technologies. The power supply engineer has become a major contributor in the overall design team. The initial effort involves the analysis of the overall power systems budget. The initial analysis begins with defining those circuit functions that use the most power. The next step identifies those functions that must be used continuously and those used intermittently. Here, the author describes how, from these basic elements, power management engineers can formulate the optimum design recommendations